How to calculate the cost of a meal

1. List every ingredient, including the small ones

Write down everything that goes into the meal: the protein, the base, the vegetables, and also the oil, salt, sauces and garnish. Small items are individually cheap, but together they add up, so give them a line of their own.

2. Work out the cost of the amount you actually use

Take the price you paid and divide it by the pack size, then multiply by the amount in the recipe. If a 1 kg bag of rice costs 2.80, then 150 g costs 2.80 ÷ 1000 × 150 = 0.42.

Use your most recent invoice or receipt, not what you remember paying last year.

Ingredient cost = (pack price ÷ pack size) × amount used

3. Allow for waste

Trimming, peeling and cooking loss mean you buy more than ends up on the plate. If you trim 20% off a chicken breast, the usable meat costs 25% more per gram than the raw price suggests. The simplest fix is to enter the raw amount you start with, not the cooked weight.

4. Add packaging and per-meal costs

Containers, lids, labels, bags, napkins and cutlery all count. So do per-order costs you can link to a single meal, like a delivery platform's commission or card fees.

5. Divide by servings if you cooked a batch

If the recipe makes 10 portions, divide the batch ingredient cost by 10, then add the packaging and other costs for one serving. Packaging is already a per-serving cost, so it is not divided again.

Direct cost per serving = (batch ingredients ÷ servings) + packaging per serving + other costs per serving